- The recently released School Reopening Readiness Guide supports district and school leaders in identifying health and safety measures that are both feasible and effective in their communities
- Suite of resources to be regularly updated with revised recommendations to reflect the latest scientific evidence and new learning resources
Bengaluru, NFAPost: Today, Ariadne Labs and The Learning Accelerator announced the launch of The Parabola Project, an initiative that aims to rapidly develop evidence-informed tools to help school system leaders identify options for school reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Parabola Project draws on expertise from both the education and health communities with the goal of minimizing health risks to students, staff, and teachers, while maximizing learning for all students.
“Reopening schools safely has far-reaching health and safety implications for teachers, staff, and students, as well as for the broader communities in which they live,” said Asaf Bitton, MD, MPH, Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“Carefully weighing COVID-19 transmission risks with the need for children to have access to a productive learning environment is critical to our ability to move forward into our next phase of normal. This work aims to provide school leaders with implementation options to consider for a more safe and comprehensive approach to school reopening in the upcoming weeks and months.”
Resources, which are available free of cost, include:
- School Reopening Readiness Guide: This evidence-informed guide is intended to assist district and school leaders in developing, evaluating, and executing operational plans for reopening schools, as well as in assessing readiness to implement these plans.
- Practitioner Toolkit: How to Build a Mask Culture: This resource aims to help educators consider how to best help students adjust to and sustain mask-wearing.
- Practitioner Toolkit: Learning Together In Socially Distanced Classrooms: This resource aims to help educators consider how to support small-group, collaborative, and one-to-one learning while physically distancing.
Developed in collaboration with several school districts in Massachusetts where the guide is also currently being piloted, The School Reopening Readiness Guide outlines a set of core public health principles to consider when approaching safe school reopening and a set of related specific implementation options for district and school leaders to consider applying to their own context. Because the pandemic and the research to mitigate it continue to rapidly evolve, resources will be regularly updated with revised recommendations to reflect the latest scientific evidence.
“We must focus on reopening in ways that meet our shared aspirations for community safety, wellbeing, and learning,” said Beth Rabbitt, Ed.L.D., Chief Executive Officer of The Learning Accelerator, a national nonprofit that is working to make the ‘potential’ possible and practical for every teacher and learner.
“Doing this will require thinking technically and adaptively, and looking at problems through multiple perspectives, including education, public health, and, crucially, the experiences and needs of practitioners, parents, and students. The Parabola Project seeks to do that, offering not just concrete recommendations but frames and common language to help leaders make decisions and implement with the whole picture in mind given their local context.”
The Parabola Project is funded by the generous contributions of the One8 Foundation.
For more information, visit parabolaproject.org.
